A speech act is a minimal functional unit in human communication.
Just as a word (refusal) is
the smallest free form found in language and a morpheme is the smallest
unit of language that carries information about meaning (-al in refuse-al makes
it a noun), the basic unit of communication is a speech act (the
speech act of refusal).

Speech act theory attempts to explain how speakers use language to
accomplish intended actions and how hearers infer intended meaning form what is
said.Although speech act studies are now considered a sub-discipline of
cross-cultural pragmatics, they actually take their origin in the philosophy of
language.

It was for too
long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a ‘statement’ can
only be to ‘describe’ some state of affairs, or to ‘state some fact’,
which it must do either truly or falsely. (…) But now in recent years, many
things, which would once have been accepted without question as ‘statements’
by both philosophers and grammarians have been scrutinized with new care. (…)
It has come to be commonly held that many utterances which look like statements
are either not intended at all, or only intended in part, to record or impart
straight forward information about the facts (…). (Austin, 1962, p. 1)

Philosophers like Austin (1962), Grice (1957), and Searle (1965, 1969,
1975) offered basic insight into this new theory of linguistic communication
based on the assumption that“(…)
the minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but
rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements,
asking questions, giving directions, apologizing, thanking, and so on” (Blum-Kulka,
House, & Kasper, 1989, p.2). Austin (1962) defines the performance of
uttering words with a consequential purpose as “the performance of a
locutionary act, and the study of utterances thus far and in these respects the
study of locutions, or of the full units of speech” (p. 69). These units of
speech are not tokens of the symbol or word or sentence but rather units of
linguistic communication and it is “(…) the production of the token in the
performance of the speech act that constitutes the basic unit of linguistic
communication” (Searle, 1965, p.136). According to Austin’s theory, these
functional units of communication have prepositional or locutionary meaning (the
literal meaning of the utterance), illocutionary meaning (the social function of
the utterance), and perlocutionary force (the effect produced by the utterance
in a given context) (Cohen, 1996, p. 384).

Speech acts have been claimed by some to operate by universal pragmatic
principles (Austin, (1962),Searle
(1969, 1975), Brown & Levinson (1978)). Others have shown them to vary in
conceptualization and verbalization across cultures and languages (Wong, 1994;
Wierzbicka, 1985). Although this debate has generated over three decades of
research, only the last 15 years marked a shift from an intuitively based
approach to an empirically based one, which “has focused on the perception and
production of speech acts by learners of a second or foreign language (in the
most cases, English as a second or foreign language, i.e., ESL and EFL) at
varying stages of language proficiency and in different social interactions”
(Cohen, 1996, p. 385).Blum Kulka
et. al., (1989) argue that there is a strong need to complement theoretical
studies of speech acts with empirical studies, based on speech acts produced by
native speakers of individual languages in strictly defined contexts.

The fact that
two speakers whose sentences are quite grammatical can differ radically in their
interpretation of each other’s verbal strategies indicates that conversational
management does rest on linguistic knowledge. But to find out what that
knowledge is we must abandon the existing views of communication which draw a
basic distinction between cultural or social knowledge on the one hand and
linguistic signaling processes on the other. (pp. 185-186)

Differences in
“cultural logic” embodied in individual languages involve the implementation
of various linguistic mechanisms.As
numerous studies have shown, these mechanisms are rather culture-specific and
may cause breakdowns in inter-ethnic communication. Such communication
breakdowns are largely due to a language transfer at the sociocultural level
where cultural differences play a part in selecting among the potential
strategies for realizing a given speech act. Hence the need to make the
instruction of speech acts an instrumental component of every ESL/ EFL
curriculum.

When second language learners engage in conversations with native
speakers, difficulties may arise due to their lack of mastery of the
conversational norms involved in the production of speech acts. Such
conversational difficulties may in turn cause breakdowns in interethnic
communication (Gumperz, 1990). When the nonnative speakers violate speech act
realization patterns typically used by native speakers of a target language,
they often suffer the perennial risk of inadvertently violating conversational
(and politeness) norms thereby forfeiting their claims to being treated by their
interactants as social equals (Kasper, 1990, p. 193).

Communication difficulties result when conversationalists do not share
the same knowledge of the subtle rules governing conversation. Scarcella (1990)
ascribes high frequency of such difficulties to the fact that “nonnative
speakers, when conversing, often transfer the conversational rules of their
first language into the second” (p. 338). Scarcella provides the following
example. (Bracketing indicates interruptions.)

1)
speaker A: Mary’s invited us to lunch. Do you wanna
go?

2)
speaker B: Sure.
[I’m not busy right now.
[Why not?

3)
speaker
A:
[Good
[I’ll come by in about thirty minutes

4)
speaker B: Think we oughta
bring
[anything?

5)
speaker A:
[No, but I’ll bring some wine anyway.

(1990, p. 338)

In this exchange, the native
speaker B inaccurately concluded that the
nonnative speaker A is rude since like many Americans, he regards interruptions
as impolite.

Rather than associate
rudeness with A’s linguistic behavior, however, B associates rudeness with A
herself. B’s reasoning might be as follows: A interrupts; interruptions are
rude; therefore, A is rude. Such reasoning is unfortunate for A, who comes from
Iran where interruptions may be associated with friendliness, indicating the
conversationalist’s active involvement in the interaction. (Scarcella, 1990,
p.338)

Learners who repeatedly
experience conversational difficulties tend to cut themselves from speakers of
the target community, not only withdrawing from them socially, but
psychologically as well (Scarcella, 1990). “’Psychological distance’ or a
‘high filter’ might be related to a number of factors, including culture
shock and cultural stress” (Scarcella, 1990, p. 343) All these factors ignite
a cycle that eventually hinders second language acquisition.

First, the learners experience conversational
difficulties.

Next, they become “clannish”, clinging to
their own group.

This limits their interaction with members of
the target culture and increases solidarity with their own cultural group.

That, in turn, creates social distance between
themselves and the target group.

The end result is that the second language
acquisition is hindered since they don’t receive the input necessary for
their language development. (Scarcella, 1990, p. 342)

Cohen (1996) claims that the fact that speech acts reflect somewhat
routinized language behavior helps learning in the sense that much of what is
said is predictable.For example,
Wolfson & Manes, (1980) have found that adjectives nice or good (e.g.,
"That's a nice shirt you're wearing" or "it was a good talk you
gave") are used almost half the time when complimenting in English and beautiful,
pretty, and great make up another 15 percent.

Yet despite the routinized nature of speech acts, there are still various
strategies to choose form - depending on the sociocultural context - and often a variety of
possible language forms for realizing these strategies, especially in the case of speech
acts with four or more possible semantic formulas such as apologies and complaints. Target
language learners may
tend to respond the way they would in their native language and culture and find
that their utterances are not at all appropriate for the target language and
culture situation. (Cohen, 1996, p. 408)

At present, there is an increasing number of studies dealing with
teaching speech act behavior in an ESL/ EFL classroom. Olshtein and Cohen
(1990), for instance, conducted a study of apologies made by EFL learners in
Israel who were taught a set of lessons on the strategies used by native English
speakers to apologize. They found that situational features can indeed be taught
in the foreign language classroom. Whereas before these apology lessons, the
nonnative speakers' apologies differed from the native English speakers', after
instruction, learners selected strategies, which were more native-like.

Scarcella (1990) provides second language instructors with a number of
guidelines intended to reduce negative consequences of communication
difficulties and increase the learners’ conversational competence through
improving their motivation:

Stress the advantages of conversing like a
native speaker.

Stress that it is not necessary to converse
perfectly to communicate in the second language.

Impress upon learners that they should not be
overly concerned with communication difficulties.

Help students accept communication difficulties
as normal.

Provide students with information about
communication difficulties.

Do not expect students to develop the
conversational skills needed to overcome all communication difficulties.

Takahashi and Beebe (1987) investigated written refusals by native
speakers of English, native speakers of Japanese, Japanese ESL students in the
United States, and Japanese EFL students in Japan and found that there was a
strong native language influence in the EFL context and negative transfer of
negative speech act behavior occurring in the more advanced levels of ESL. The
researchers claims that the advanced students had greater facility at speaking
English which allowed them to express complex notions in Japanese like 'being
deeply honored' to receive an invitation.

In another study, Robinson (1991) asked twelve native Japanese-speaking
women to respond to a written discourse completion task calling for refusals of
requests and invitations in English. He found that there was a sociocultural
problem in the respondents’ refusals since Japanese women are brought up to
say yes, or at least not to say no and thus the task of refusing was a difficult
concept for them.

Yet another refusal study, undertaken by Tickle (1991), looked at
pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals made by Japanese speakers in a business
setting. Thirty-one Japanese men who all had at least five years of business
experience (including a year in the United States) were asked to complete a
discourse completion task (DCT) where hypothetical situations varied by turf
(customer’s vs. the businessperson’s), relationship (positive, negative),
status (higher or lower), and function (refusal to an invitation vs. refusal to
a request). The results showed that refusals on a customer’s turf were more
direct than those on the businessperson’s turf. They were also more direct
when no prior relationship existed between the interlocutors. In refusals to
invitation (e.g., to go drinking), lower-status interlocutors expressed more
regret toward the higher-status one. In refusals to request (e.g., of
co-workers), more negative willingness/ability (e.g., “I can’t”) and
empathy occurred. Results of this particular study provided material for
cross-cultural programs training American businesspeople to deal more
effectively with Japanese clients.

A speech event is an identifiable type of discourse used in a
particular speech situation. The speech event of refusing in the workplace can
thus be described as the discourse associated with the entire interaction
triggered by the speech act of refusal and placed in the work setting.

S.P.E.A.K.I.N.G.
Mnemonic
of the Speech Event
"Refusals in the Workplace"

(Adapted
from Meechan & Rees-Miller, 2001)

Component

Explanation

Sample
Analysis

Setting
or locale à

Scene or situation à

Scientific
information about where it occurred
(place, time)

Los
Angeles, 5 pm on May 21, 2004

Generic
information about the social occasion

Business
meeting

Participants

Who
was there

(addressor/ addressee, performer/audience,questioner/answerer)

Addressor
– Mr. Robertson, the manager

Addressee
– Doris, employee

EndsOutcomes à

Goals à

Purpose
of the event
(exchange of goods, etc…)

Refusal

Purpose
of the participants
(impart knowledge, minimize price)

Addressor
– to request from the employee

Addressee
– to refuse the request

Act
sequences

Content
and forms particular to its use

Content:
refusal to a request that the employee stays in late to finish an
important proposal

Key

.
Tone
or mood

.

Instrumentalities

Type
of discourse or channel
(spoken, written, recitation, etc.)

Spoken

Types
of speech
(dialect, style)

Formal
standard business English

NormsInteraction à

Interpretation à

Conventions
of the interaction

After
addressing the employee, the manager makes a request, the employee says
she would love to help, refuses politely and offers to come in early the
next day

Normal
interpretation

Employee
recognizes that the manager’s is a little upset while the manager
recognizes that the employee is making an attempt to offer an alternative
solution to the problem